Permanence
by oh-snap-it's-her
Summary: "Clint stood in his box of loneliness; no one could get in. Problem was, he wasn't sure he could get out either." or, Five times the Avengers made being on a team a little easier. Rated T for language.
1. Thor

_There were sickening thuds as his targets fell to the ground. Only one arrow was needed for the three of them: a mother, a father, and a little girl, no more than seven._

_ The blood didn't faze him like it used to. He had come to accept it as just another thing on the job description. Sometimes, he could almost imagine it was a grotesque picture, the story of a dead man's life, written out like a declaration for the world. A grim conclusion to a life of existence. One last contribution to a world they were leaving._

_ He didn't regret killing them. He really didn't. He didn't see that the little girl's eyes were still open, and they were a chocolate brown like warmth and family but they weren't anymore because he had taken away the life with a swipe of his hand and replaced it with emptiness._

_ He didn't see it because he didn't care. That's what he kept telling himself, repeating it like a mantra._

_ Suddenly, the father stood up._

_ Clint realized he really did care._

_A piano materialized from thin air, and the man glided over to the bench and sat down with a grace that defied human bounds. His fingers came to a rest on the keys for a long, anticipation-laced moment, and then they began to play, dancing like flowers in the breeze. Effortless._

_ His eyes were deadened. Blood dripped from a hole in his chest. The ivory keys were splattered red._

_ The mother then got to her feet and came to a standstill behind her husband, a hand resting on his shoulder as he continued to play the tuneless melody. She smiled, her lipstick like a harsh red slash across her face. It matched the red slash through her chest, and her blood-stained teeth. Her other hand was outstretched and a smaller hand took hold of it._

_ The little girl._

_ She began to dance with the faltering steps of a child just learning. After a few stumbling steps, her feet soon graced the ground with soft deliberation. The elegance with which she was moving was not human. She continued dancing to her father's empty music, until Clint realized that the mother and father had disappeared. It was just the child now._

_ She came to a stop with graceful poise. She turned slowly to look at him. She didn't notice the blood dripping onto the ground._

_ Her eyes were lifeless, yet she smiled._

_ She was dead._

* * *

Clint jerked awake. He didn't move. Didn't speak. Didn't do anything as he stared unblinkingly with wide eyes at the darkened ceiling.

There was a time, back when he was younger and more naive about the world around him, when he had taken less hits and seen less death, when he would pretend like that dream was just a passing thing. Those people were only alive in his subconscious. They couldn't touch him because he was utterly invincible.

Now, though, he was bone-weary and tired. He accepted the nightmare like an old friend and bottled up any emotions it brought up. He resignedly acknowledged the horrible guilt that he normally kept behind secure walls of indifference. No one else was allowed into the little barricade he had raised around himself. He had promised himself that a long time ago.

He could feel all of the lives he had taken hold of with both hands and stolen from their owners. He felt them scratching at his bones. If he could give them back, he would. But they wouldn't let him go. They'd latched onto his body like a second skin and hung to him no matter what he did. He didn't know how to get them off.

Rationalizations were thin and weak. He had given up on trying to reconstruct his past with the sheer power of his mind, and now only trudged on until he reached the end. Until he actually did die.

Clint rolled to his feet. The cold floor gripped at him.

Exiting his room, he walked silently through Stark Tower, on edge and alert. He did not want to meet anyone tonight.

When the light of the TV splashed against the walls of the hallway, he froze, breath catching in his throat. He listened for the sounds of living, something he was able to discern with ease after all these year. (He hated it.)

Hazarding a peek around the corner, he was met with the sight of Steve asleep on the couch, chest rising and falling to the rhythm of a nightmare. He didn't want to be privy to the vulnerability of an invulnerable man. He snaked his way through the room under the shelter of the flashing lights from the muted TV.

At long last, he was breathing in the night air of New York. Way up on the roof, where the pollution and sounds of the city weren't as bad, he could pretend he was somewhere else, alone. Not being looked up to by seven-year-old boys with toy arrows, who could only see his good side, his superhero persona. Not being looked down upon by everyone else who knew he was just kidding himself, because he knew how to kill without remorse.

The father's tuneless melody was echoing in his ears.

He felt like this superhero gig was just a dream. Who was he to fight with those who were toeing the line of godhood (especially since one really was a god)? Sooner or later, the rest of the team would go their respective ways, and Clint would be where he was the last time.

How could he trust those who knew they were better than them?

The thing about trust is it has to go both ways. One person has to risk everything in order to depend on someone else. And if the other person didn't fully rely on you as well, you ended up the fool, and you ended up crashing and burning, wondering just where your trust had disappeared to.

Another thing about trust is that it's _never_ equal. And Clint had always cared too much for his own good.

So Clint stood in his box of loneliness; no one could get in. Problem was, he wasn't sure he could get out either.

That's what it was, he thought bitterly to himself. I'm beginning to trust them, and they'll end up hurting me.

His musings were cut short when a spectacular fork of lightning streaked through the night sky, followed closely by a booming clap of thunder that shook the windows and made his heart falter in its path. Clint scanned the skyline, hoping that that wasn't what he thought it was—

He caught sight of the flapping red cape and sighed. The last thing he wanted right now was interaction with one of his teammates.

The god of thunder landed gently on the roof. As his feet hit the concrete, the clouds immediately cleared. Thor blinked at Clint with surprise as he noticed the archer leaning on the railing. "Friend Barton. I did not expect you to be out of doors so late at night."

Clint's fingers tightened on the rail as he mentally willed Thor away. "Couldn't sleep."

Thor's expression cleared, and he—much to Clint's chagrin—joined him at the edge of the roof. "Is it the nightmares that ail you?"

Clint bit his tongue to prevent himself from saying something harsh. It wasn't the god's fault, after all. "Doesn't matter. Listen, you'd better go inside and get some sleep."

"Not when a comrade is amidst a problem. How can I sleep when you cannot?"

Clint sometimes cursed Thor's black-and-white sense of righteousness. He packaged up a few words of admission. "You're right. It was a nightmare. But I'm fine now. Really, it's okay."

The father's fingers were dancing over the keys, faster and faster, building in a crescendo.

"It does help to share your burden on occasion, Friend Barton. If you should need someone to recount your troubles to, I am always present." Thor didn't seem to be giving up very easily.

Clint turned his head away. "I'm fine, Thor. I'm serious. One hundred percent. One hundred and two percent. Never been—"

"Why are you so very wary of your comrades?"

Clint stopped midsentence, mouth falling closed with a click. Had he really been so obvious? Denial jumped to his lips. "What are you talking about? I'm not wary of you guys."

But he was. He really was. He had his teammates' backs one hundred percent, but that didn't mean he had to give them his. He had a feeling they would be none the wiser if he didn't.

Thor seemed to share his sentiments. "But you are. This is why you will not let us help you when you are bearing a burden," Thor countered wisely.

"It's not a burden to be shared, Thor."

"Every burden can be shared. You are the only judge of that."

Clint stayed silent. Black and white keys flashed as they were hit, the father's hands bobbing back and forth.

Thor sighed heavily, seeming resigned. "If you are certain." He turned to go inside.

"I've killed people. Innocent people." Clint shut his mouth quickly, before any other words escaped. In his mind's eye, he could see his targets drop to the ground, their strings of mortality cut with fatal precision.

Thor paused midstride. He turned back slowly and rejoined Clint at the edge of the roof. He didn't say anything, for which Clint was grateful. Words were meager against death. They were swallowed by murder. They ate Clint like they didn't even care.

The two Avengers stood in silence for a while. Eventually, Clint picked up the story with a tone of nonchalance, strikingly different to the brokenness inside. "I was an assassin. Still am, really. Because I'm sure as hell not a superhero." The words seemed shockingly hollow in the cold air. "I can still hear the sounds of them dying. My targets. Death has a certain sound, you know? Like emptiness." Thor didn't say anything. Clint continued. "I'm just waiting until this whole, surreal superhero gig runs to the ground. I'm not good enough to be on this team. I'm all broken inside. And I'm not fixable."

Clint stopped again and waited for Thor to laugh at him. But the god didn't say anything for a long time.

"Everyone is fixable." The words were harsh claps of sound, painting the silence with startling vibrancy.

Clint just let out a bark of laughter, but it seemed that the happiness had forgotten to join the sound. "I don't think so, big guy."

Thor didn't appear to hear him. "Everyone has a darkened past. The thing to search for is the future. The future is very light, as it is untarnished by the course of life. You may not be proud of your past, but one seldom is. I only wish you didn't have to learn that." Clint was struck by how human Thor looked in that moment.

The father's music was growing softer.

A silence settled itself between them. It grew and blossomed until it enveloped them both, but neither wanted to break it. To shatter the glass and send everything swirling back into inconsistency. Suddenly, they weren't both Avengers. They weren't just names on a piece of paper, but teammates. Friends.

Thor was the one to claim the silence in the end. "You had best be returning to bed. I wish that no nightmare befalls you."

"Thank you, Thor."

"And Clint?"

Clint was surprised at the use of his name. "Yeah?"

"You are on the good side now, and that is all that I acknowledge of any of my comrades."

Thor left.

It was only as Clint was settling back between his covers that he realized he had broken the promise he had made to himself of letting no one past his walls.

But somehow, he thought, it wasn't all that bad.

The music trailed off to a blissful silence.

* * *

**Author's Note: **This will be a 5 part story (with the possible addition of an epilogue) centering around Clint and his acclimation to working on a team. I'm not a spy, obviously, but I would think that the lonely lifestyle would be something one doesn't let go of very easily. Each section will be one of the Avengers helping Clint over his deplorable self-esteem and trust issues. Lots of angst. My favorite.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading, and if you have the time to drop a review, feedback is always appreciated. Tell me what worked, what didn't, any suggestions or requests. I'm all ears. Have a great day!


	2. Bruce

He wasn't eating. He wasn't sleeping.

Not that that was a problem.

Because it wasn't. It wasn't at all.

Maybe it was a tad selfish, because the others put everything into helping out the rest of the team and his contributions were minimal at best. Maybe it was a bit dangerous, because dependability was a cruel, cruel thing and the hurt and pain could double with an alarming ease. It no longer mattered if Clint didn't care if he crashed and burned, because his teammates were _so damned stupid for trusting him _and would blindly follow him to the laughing tendrils of death because _that's what friends do for each other, Clint. _

But he couldn't sleep when the nightmares got bad, or the blood would refuse to wash off his fingers like it was victims desperately begging for him to give them answers _why did you kill me, what did I do, please notice me, I'm innocent _and he could hardly fight the urge to vomit, so eating was out of the question.

And it had been really bad the past week.

He could still hear the children's screams of desperation (they still had hope; always had hope) dominating the air. He could pinpoint the exact moment where the screams were cut off and fifteen lives were stolen from right under his nose.

He knew he couldn't have stopped it. Arrows don't stop bombs.

But they do stop people.

The person responsible for the deaths was no longer. Clint made sure of that.

However, it still didn't prevent the heart-stopping moment of complete and unadulterated dread as he felt the lives he had fought so valiantly to preserve rush past him, on their way to their next great adventure.

The death of children always got him the worst. Maybe it was after killing so many people whose minds had been taken over by dominance and greed, the sight of innocence in its purest form was refreshing. It was a sign of hope. A sign that maybe this generation would be better than the last. One of the children will one day discover the cure for cancer, while another becomes the next Mozart, and his friend would be the guiding hand in achieving world peace.

So he didn't eat and didn't sleep. Not because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't.

As he stood atop an old apartment building, watching the fight unfold like a blossoming flower as the aliens made their descent upon the city, he couldn't keep the blurriness from creeping into his vision. Seven and a half hours of sleep a week and _maybe _a granola bar or two a day if he could stomach it was pushing it for him.

When the Chitauri attacked, it was like finding a chink in Earth's armor, and now the whole universe knew about it. SHIELD did a good job with damage control, but drawing out the Avengers had become something of a favorite pastime for a whole bunch of species. The fact that they hadn't yet been defeated only strengthened their desire to go a round with the team, seeing how they matched up.

It was fucking annoying. The fact that innocent people got caught in the crossfire only fueled his anger.

He snapped back into focus as Tony swooped by him in his suit and made a beeline for the street below. He was so distracted by the red and gold metal throwing sunlight into the air that he almost missed Tony's light remark. "So, what's the alien du jour?"

Steve was already bashing an alien's head in with his shield. "They can fly, and that's all I know. Thor would know what they are. Too bad he's in Asgard."

"Yes, damn him for maintaining intergalactic peace," Natasha remarked dryly. Clint wasn't sure where she was. Probably skinning one of the poor creatures somewhere. "Have you tried asking them? The aliens?"

"Ah, the diplomatic approach!" Tony said. "Well thought out. I shall attempt that now." There was a short pause, followed by an unmanly screech that Tony later denied ever making. "I would like it to be noted that the targets are hostile and respond negatively, and may I add, unnecessarily so, to friendly conversation."

The arrows Clint released were slightly wobbly as they streaked toward his targets. He pretended not to notice, because denial seemed to be the only thing he was good at.

"Hawkeye, watch the aliens tailing Iron Man," Steve ordered. Clint could see the flash of red, white, and blue three blocks away, and absentmindedly wondered how the hell Steve had known there were aliens chasing Tony.

He shook himself out of his thoughts, because holy crap there were aliens chasing Tony. In retrospect, maybe he should've had more than half a banana to sustain him through the entire battle. Maybe he should've attempted to sleep last night as well. However, there was nothing he could do about it now, so he shook his head and released another arrow into the fray. "I got it, Cap," he replied easily. He selected an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and took aim.

It was an easy shot. The aliens were completely exposed; their broad backs an inviting target. It was a shot Clint should have made in his sleep. But "should have" wasn't good enough. He knew as soon as he released the bowstring that something was off. His gut feeling proved to be true as the arrow impaled itself in a wall not two inches from Tony's head, almost ten feet from the intended targets.

"_Holy shit_!" Tony yelled in surprise. Clint's heart crawled into his throat as he took in the knowledge that one more inch and Tony would have been speared.

"Iron Man!" Steve's voice sounded slightly strained, and Clint could see one of the aliens all but pinning him onto the ground. Cap's worry for his teammates, as always, far preceded self-preservation. "What's wrong?"

"Hawkeye almost impaled my fucking head, that's what's wrong!" Tony shouted. Clint felt sick. _All my fault all my fault all my fault—_

"Hawkeye?" Steve asked, surprise coloring his voice even over the slightly static sound of the comms.

Clint lifted a shaking hand to his hair. His bow hung limply at his side, suddenly feeling unbearably heavy. _I almost killed Stark._ "I—I didn't mean to—I missed the shot—"

From his vantage point on the roof of an apartment building, Clint could see Steve deliver a hard kick to the opponent holding him down that crumpled its chest like a crushed can. Enemy incapacitated, he took the opportunity to fairly rip its head off, digging his shield into the back of its neck. The contorted corpse was kicked onto the ground while Steve retrieved his shield from where it was trapped between monster and rubble and started running towards the rest of the team. Now that he wasn't distracted by the enemy, he returned to the conversation. "You're telling me that you missed the shot?" he repeated dubiously.

"I didn't mean to!" Clint felt the need to repeat those words, though they did little to reverse what happened and the others probably already knew anyway.

There was a short puff of breath on Steve's end and then a long stretch of silence. Finally, he began to speak again, but it was not directed towards Clint. "Black Widow, what's your status?" Steve asked. Clint knew the captain had a team to lead, but he couldn't help feeling dejected, like Steve was ignoring him. Like he blamed him.

And in truth, Clint couldn't fault him for it. It was _his _arrow. _His _shot. _His _mistake. There was no other way around it.

Natasha's calculated response came over the line, but Clint was too distracted to notice. Because the aliens that he was supposed to have taken out had regrouped and were once again advancing on Tony.

"Stark! Enemy directly behind you!"

Clint could see the red and gold suit turn midair, like a bird in its graceful ignorance, but he knew in his gut that it was too late. The aliens overwhelmed the Iron Man suit, pulling him down to the street.

"Cap, Stark's being attacked," Clint reported, hoping his voice sounded calmer than he felt.

Cap spun in the middle of the street and started sprinting in the opposite direction, towards Tony. Super serum or no, he was still on foot and it would take at least thirty seconds for him to get to Tony's position.

Clint began to feel lightheaded. "This is all my fault!"

"You were bound to miss a shot sometime." That was Natasha.

That only served to make him feel worse. His head was spinning, and oh God what if Tony was killed—

He didn't notice the alien behind him until he was already spiraling into unconsciousness.

* * *

He awoke to the smell of antiseptic and shrill beeps. A quick analysis of his condition revealed a throbbing headache and a body flushed with pain medication. His mind was severed from his body, and his limbs were made of cotton. His tongue felt too large in his mouth.

He blinked slowly, eyebrows furrowed, trying to remember what landed him here. It was like scratching at a thick stone wall that he was too exhausted to break through.

"A concussion," said a low, soft voice to his right. The noise rang in his ears like his head was empty. Clint slid his eyes toward the sound and came face-to-face with Bruce. He looked very collected—shirt tucked in, newspaper propped against his knees and Clint's hospital bed, glasses perched on his nose—which was about as put together as Bruce could ever manage. He always seemed like an old pencil drawing with graphite that had been smudged and rubbed bare over time. Still, his smile was like an endless, depthless sea—a kind of familiar Clint didn't know he found solace in. His expression was encouraging, like he knew exactly what thoughts Clint was rolling around in his mind.

"I was wondering what happened, actually," Clint replied, hoping the doctor would help him out.

Bruce sighed, stretched, and stood up. He picked up a chart and began to flip through it, slowly and deliberately. Clint could feel the memories between his fingers and the sheets, but he didn't grab hold of them. He was too afraid of what he might find. As the silence began to build in its magnitude, Clint started to wonder if he had even heard him. Then Bruce glanced up and said, "I can tell you Tony's pretty pissed at you."

The memory came crashing back—the fight, the misfire, the aliens, Tony—Clint winced, guilt worming through his veins with heart-stopping force. "Is Stark alright?"

Bruce jerked his head to the right. "He's in the room next door." At Clint's horrified expression, he quickly added, "He's alright for the most part. Broken arm and a couple of cracked ribs. A mild concussion, as well, but yours takes first place severity-wise."

"I don't think that's a good thing," Clint grumbled. His head throbbed in agreement.

Bruce let out a low chuckle. "Probably not," he agreed. He saw the guilt painted on Clint's face, and his expression melted from a smirk to gentle kindness. "But all-in-all, it was something that could've happened to him in his workshop."

The words were meant to assuage Clint's guilt, but they didn't. Yes it could've happened in his workshop, but it didn't. It happened because of Clint, and humans had the cruel privilege of having a conscience.

But he knew Bruce was looking for signs of weakness, so Clint just nodded, and let a mask of relief cover his remorse as the two Avengers lapsed into silence.

Bruce meticulously folded his newspaper and Clint refused to meet his eyes, even though he could feel his steady gaze on him. The silence was becoming suffocating, and the distance between them was thick and electric with words aching to reveal themselves. Clint scratched at his IV, the silence seeping into his bones and making him restless. It was a long minute before Clint asked, "Can I help you with something?" Making light of the conversation, skimming the surface, trying not to get pulled under by the unremorseful hands of truth.

Bruce let out a sigh. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"

Clint frowned, trying not to show that the blood had frozen in his veins. His voice was careful, measured. "What do you mean?"

"I _mean, _you never miss a shot. Never. So why did you almost nail Tony in the head today?"

Clint's frown deepened. He should have expected Bruce to want to talk. Lay it all out, categorize it in alphabetical order, color-coded. Clint was simply not interested. So he told Bruce a lie. "I miss shots sometimes."

Bruce smiled gently, but in such a way that told Clint that the bullshit wouldn't cut it. "No you don't."

Clint didn't know what to say. There wasn't anything he _could _say. The truth enveloped him like he was being swallowed by a beast.

Bruce seemed to know what to say though, and he spoke. "I'm not blind."

"I didn't say you were." The bed was too small, the sheets were itchy. The walls seemed to be closing in.

"I see things. I watch you guys." He let out a mournful chuckle. "This team is the closest thing to family I've had since the gamma accident. I've always had to watch myself constantly, fend for myself…and suddenly, I have a whole bunch of people who each come from their own past of misery. Each dealing with their own problems, and each taking refuge in this little eye in the storm. My problems don't matter so much anymore. Because you guys understand. You come from the same places. So I'm always watching you, because I don't want to lose you guys." Bruce put the admission in Clint's hands like a morbid reward.

Clint let Bruce's tone surround him silently. He analyzed each word, weighing them for truth or platitudes. Bruce watched him soundlessly, his pen tapping rapidly on his clipboard.

"You haven't been eating. Haven't been sleeping. I know because I care. I really care," Bruce said finally. "You've got people who understand. You've got people who will help."

Clint averted his gaze, staring resolutely at the peaks and valleys of the heart monitor. Bruce touched his shoulder. "Let us help."

Clint finally drew enough strength to look at him, but was met with empty air. He was gone.

* * *

He was released the next day from the hospital.

"Get plenty of rest and watch the physical exertion. It'll be a couple weeks before you're out on the field again," his doctor told him. He gave Clint a smile. "But you're pretty much as good as new."

Clint wished that was the case.

The guilt hung around him like a cloak, and he felt it choking him when he caught sight of Tony's arm, nestled in a sling. Even though Tony had been released almost a whole day before him, it would take him a lot longer to be whole again as his bones healed. And if that didn't just rub it in Clint's face.

Tony shot him a withering glare as Clint shuffled into the kitchen upon his release from the hospital, letting him know that the incident hadn't been forgotten, and _certainly _not forgiven, and turned toward the door with mumbled words that Clint could decipher just enough to hear "work" and "lab."

Bruce was watching the whole exchange from the counter, mouth contorted in disapproval. Clint couldn't tell if the displeasure was directed toward Tony or him, as he turned back to the stove before Clint could see much more than that. Something was crackling appetizingly in a pan, the aroma warm and heavy and comforting, though Clint didn't really know why. "Doctors give you a clean bill of health?"

Clint sat himself at a stool at the counter, dropping his duffle on the ground next to him. "Not allowed to be on the field for a couple weeks, and the gym is off limits for one. Plenty of sleep and water." Clint rolled his eyes. "Heard that one a time or two before."

"Have you?" The tone was light, but the implications were anything but. When Bruce caught Clint's halfhearted glare, he raised his hands in defeat. "Just saying."

Clint rested his head on his arms, probably looking like a sulking child, but his head was throbbing too painfully to care. The events of the past few days, coupled with his lack of sleep the week before, were finally catching up to him, and he felt utter exhaustion settle on his shoulders.

Bruce was clanking around at the stove, metal hitting ceramic and forks and knives tinkling against each other in domestic harmony. The sound was comforting, like a warm blanket he imagined his mother would have settled around his shoulders had he remembered more of her than brief flashes of gentle smiles and fleeting touches of soft hands. He felt his eyes drooping and would've been completely content to drop into sleep for a decade or two, but a hand touched his elbow and there was the noise of ceramic sliding across the granite countertop. Clint opened one eye and stared uncomprehendingly at the omelet, seemingly out of place on Tony's expensive dishware.

"Eat," Bruce ordered. Clint met his eyes and saw the unspoken words. _Let us help you._

Apparently mixing chemicals translated to the culinary arts, because the omelet tasted better than anything he had ever had before. And while not exactly the connoisseur of fine dining, Clint had been around a while and around the world even more.

"See?" Bruce said, settling into the seat next to him, a plate of his own in his hands. "We're your friends. We can help if you just let us."

Clint flattened his palms on the counter, like he could tamp down the sudden swirl of emotion that sent pinpricks of warmth into his skin. Bruce smiled slightly; Clint could see him out of the corner of his eye.

"Finish that and go to bed," the doctor said. "I made sure to tell Jarvis to keep everyone away from your room for at least fifteen hours. We'll sort out the Tony situation tomorrow. I'll talk to him."

A swell of gratitude caught in Clint's throat. It was taking him an embarrassingly long time to accept that his teammates weren't leaving him, but he was learning.

"Thank you," Clint whispered, and he meant it with every fiber of his being.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I'm supposed to be studying exams right now, and that's not happening. Why am I not surprised? But I digress. So…yeah! Chapter two! Let me know how you liked it!


	3. Natasha

If Clint was to name one constant in his life, it would be Natasha.

Of course it was.

Their connection at first was unwaveringly set at a professional level. Both had trust issues that could circle the world seven times, because in a job where everything was built on falsehoods and fabrications, they weren't naive enough to think that friendships were strong enough to not come tumbling down with the softest puff of breath. On top of that, she still couldn't quite look at him after he uprooted everything she stood for and brought her to SHIELD, and he respected her prowess with a gun enough not to push her. Many things could be said about Clint, but he liked his head intact and limbs where they were presently located, thank you very much.

But they were the two best agents at SHIELD, and even though she was still being watched like a maximum-security prisoner, evil didn't wait and the people in charge needed someone who would do everything they needed to do in order to complete a mission, even when the grey that they danced in so often turned to black. Working together was inevitable.

It didn't happen suddenly, or noticeably. It was a slow, gradual process and Clint blinked one day and saw that at some point, and with neither of their knowledge, a tendril of something permanent had crossed the bridge created by being coworkers and cemented them together.

It was something novel for Clint. A little thrill went down his spine when they were together, like a little kid when he first gets a puppy and wakes up early just to play with it some more. But unlike a kid with a puppy, the newness failed to wear off. He watched her, took note of her little quirks that made her human, like how she pulled on the tip of her nose when she was thinking, or that she tied her shoelaces differently than he did, or she could only sleep with two pillows (one time, as she searched the rundown motel for another pillow, he commented that spies didn't have the luxury of being picky. She made him give her his. He didn't really mind).

It was odd, Clint decided, to have her friendship at his fingertips at all times; he could search her out whenever he wanted for the simple reason of wanting to talk to her. He never worried about her not having his back, and she felt the same about him. It was beautifully simplistic and Clint had never been so satisfied.

But Clint was under no false pretenses. Their high rank at SHIELD had them going toe-to-toe with some of the most dangerous men the world had to offer. And it scared him a little that one day he could blink and this vibrant world she put him in would turn to grey stone and cemetery dirt.

It was a long while before she admitted she felt the same way.

"I could die tomorrow," she said, gazing up at him from where she had pillowed her head on her arms. She was on her stomach on her bed in the hotel room they were sharing in Atlanta.

He didn't know where she was going with this route of conversation. "So could I."

There was a pregnant pause as she studied him, chewing on the inside of her cheek. "I think I'd be sad if you died," she said plainly. She seemed almost surprised to find herself admitting that, and to be honest, Clint wasn't expecting it either. The room felt lighter, airier, as if all the secrets and concealments had been chased out. In that moment, he was more content than he had been in ages.

Even so, he had a facade to keep up, so he went with a noncommittal, "Thanks."

It was that mission that she saved his life for the first time.

He was traveling on foot down a crowded street, gun drawn at his side as to not garner attention. The man he was tailing was only fifteen feet ahead of him, ignorant of his heart rapidly beating away its last. Clint's eyes never wavered, his footsteps steady, even as everyone in hell anticipated his joining with them. His sight was set and there was nothing to do but follow through.

Before Clint could come within five feet of the man, however, he was startled by the sounding of a gun.

His first thought was that he had been shot. He knew from that mission in Brazil that it could take a blissfully unaware second for the pain to register. But then he shook off his surprise and the analytical, agent-of-SHIELD part of him quickly found a problem with the way his body remained upright. Not jerked violently back with the impact of a bullet.

So he didn't get shot, then.

His second thought went to Natasha, who had been watching the whole scene from an apartment on the side of the street that had been emptied due to construction. But Clint had made sure she had little to do with this mission, so she had no reason to be getting shot at.

The only thing really left to do was turn around and find out the answer for sure. So he did exactly that.

He was met with the flap of a leather jacket tugging closed and the collapse of a man. In their limited experience with death, the civilians around them choked on their screams as they slowly began to process the scene erupting around them. Natasha met his eyes through the swell of chaos, hand still gripping the halves of her jacket together, and Clint found himself looking down, bypassing the blood and life draining from a hole in the man's chest, and locked his gazed on the loaded gun still looped around the man's index finger.

Clint spun quickly, firing one calculated shot that dropped his target into the swirling crowd, grabbed Natasha's hand, and ran.

Their breaths were clawing their throats, their legs quivering with exhaustion, but the adrenaline and need to survive prodded their heels as the authorities breathed their jail sentences at their backs.

They reached their motel and swung into the room, the slam of the door like hiding under the covers from the monsters, impractical, but safe.

Chests were hitching in erratic rhythms, breaths like freedom escaping from parted lips. Clint swallowed after a good three minutes of recovering, the adrenaline rush subsiding with a wave of calm and clarity of terror in equal parts. "You saved my life." It was stated as fact because Clint knew it was nothing different.

Natasha rolled her head away from his where they rested against the door. "He had a gun right next to your head." Her voice was impossibly small. "I didn't think…I almost got us killed anyway."

Clint just laughed. He laughed and laughed because he was so indescribably _happy _right then. He was alive, she was alive, and they were _friends_, so he couldn't cap his mirth. It took less than five seconds for Natasha to join in, even if she was laughing for an entirely different reason; her laughter high and raw and his low and solid and tying together in the kind of harmony that was only beautiful to them. It was unhinged and hysterical and _genuine _because they were alive and they would be for a long time yet.

Their laughter melted into giggles that trailed off into quiet friendship. Natasha slid down the door until she was leaning against his shoulder. "You totally owe me one, by the way."

Clint conceded with great show and exaggeration, but in truth he knew he would spend the rest of his days trying to make up what she gave to him. Clint knew how smart Natasha was, and he knew that getting inside people's heads was her job, but she could never comprehend how much she meant to him.

But the danger wasn't completely eradicated in the world at the moment, because the world didn't revolve to the whims of one person, even though she meant the world to him. As long as they were in their business, death was one bullet away.

But that bullet didn't seem quite so fatal with Natasha by his side. He knew she would always try to save him to the best of her ability.

The next time she saved his life, her hands were inch-deep in his chest as blood pulsed away his life, desperately trying not to notice how ashen his face and how his pulse was only the barest of flutters, his breath almost a ghost.

That's what she told him when he woke up in SHIELD medical, ribs aching and a throat too tight and raw to breathe properly. He saw the tiniest of creases between her eyebrows, and the minute tremble in her voice under the matter-of-fact tone she always used to relay reports.

He grabbed her wrist as she droned on, stating facts like a robot, because she thought facts were sturdier than emotion and she could use them to build a wall around herself. Her voice stuttered to a stop at the contact, and for a second Clint was positive the tears that had suddenly sprung to the corners of her eyes would lose their battle against her dignity. But as Clint watched her pull her shoulders back and fortify her spine, her chin tilted up in defiance, he chided himself for being so stupid as to think she'd break down in front of him.

She sniffed and valiantly tried to collect her voice as she said with flimsy haughtiness, "That's two you owe me."

"Duly noted," he said, because he wasn't some asshole who drew attention to others' weakness. "I'll buy you ice cream or something to make up for it."

He joked about it, but he was acutely aware of the debt collecting over him like a tower, threatening to crush him at any moment.

She took down the man holding a knife to his throat down in Chile, stabbed an arrow through the heart of the girl who had broken his bow and scattered the contents of his quiver across the floor of a warehouse in Tokyo, took a cable to the neck of the man about to ambush him in his sleep in a cave in Brazil somewhere, nearly decapitated the two men that had gotten hold of him and held him captive, threw his arm around her shoulder and half-walked, half-dragged Clint out of a burning building, shot the woman who had been working for the enemy and had weaseled her way into their trust, and pulled him out of a lake where his unconscious form had been thrown in the heat of a battle. Not to mention what happened in Budapest.

She did it so easily, so effortlessly, that it was hard to believe something so delicately fleeting as life was cradled in her hands.

Until seven years after she saved his life for the first time.

There was an illicit arms dealing happening in southern California and when Nick Fury tells you to jump the only proper response is "how high?" So Clint and Natasha packed their bags and flew out to the small town, their invincibility coating them like glass. Sturdy until shattered.

The mission had gone south fast, their cover was blown wide open, and they found themselves on the wrong side of those illegal weapons as they scrambled for their lives and hope.

Natasha later told him it was all very dramatic how it happened. Clint turned around with an arrow nocked in his bow, and like in the movies, time slowed down as his fingers released the bowstring. The arrow was perfectly on target, striking the opponent right through the heart. He was dead less than a second later.

But not before he pulled the trigger of his gun.

Natasha turned around just as Clint hit the ground, barely managing to catch his shoulders and lower him so he was perfectly flat. They later found out, at the hospital, that the bullet had perforated the top of his stomach and grazed the lung in its deadly path. All Natasha could see right then was Clint's life pulsing away in time with his heartbeat.

It was only five minutes before Clint stopped breathing, but it felt like a long eternity. Natasha immediately started CPR as the blood coated everything like a scathing reminder. It was as if someone had taken their thumb and smudged the perfect lines of their lives. Natasha didn't remember how long she kept up the chest compressions, feeling the bones of his ribs shift as she tried to force life back into him. There was a copper taste in her mouth. Her stomach rolled.

She didn't even register at first the urgent but not unkind hands that extracted him from her care, or the sudden multiplication of people on the scene, people all swarming her _best friend_.

"You've gotta save him!" she yelled and even though she was the Black Widow and she never broke down she felt damn close to it right now as there were shouts for "Clear!" and "Start CPR again, we need to get a pulse!"

"We'll do our best," said the kindly paramedic, warm hands like reality on her shoulders. "You have to stay calm and let the EMS do their job, we're doing everything we can to get him back to you all good as new."

"He's my best friend!" She needed him to understand, needed him to take away the black pit that was opening up in her chest, wrapping around her heart and stealing its life-giving beats. She watched in desperation as Clint was lifted onto the stretcher and rushed to the waiting ambulance.

The paramedic gently steered her towards the vehicle that was flashing _redredred_ _like blood_. "Get in. It's amazing what I've seen happen through the sheer power of love." _Love was for children_. The response jumped to her lips. But it died a slow death under the man's knowing gaze.

There was little Natasha could do in the ambulance except watch his heart stutter erratically and dip into a flat line. Never had she felt so hopeless as the EMS fluttered around Clint like earthbound angels, trying to pull him back from his mortality. She gripped his hand as the cold stole her hope and happiness with every passing second.

The _beep _of the heart monitor was like the breath of God himself, though Natasha most certainly wasn't religious. One old paramedic with wise eyes filled with all the good in the world let out a disbelieving laugh and squeezed Natasha's shoulder, eyes on the heart monitor like he was witnessing a miracle. _Maybe he was. _"Well I'll be damned. He's must have something to come back to."

Natasha wasn't naive enough to believe it was her, but as her heart stopped pounding unadulterated dread through her veins, she found it nice to pretend. "You owe me," Natasha whispered to him under the flurry of hands trying to keep him stabilized. "You can't leave me when you owe me."

But his condition was anything but stable with his massive amounts of internal damage. As he was rushed into the operating room upon arrival to the hospital, the daunting words of "V-tach!" and "Get the defibrillator!" clouded the cluster of frantic paramedics. Natasha felt strangely hollow as she was left watching the doctors wheel him away from her spot in the waiting room. _She _had always been the one to make him better. Now she had to let others take her spot.

Natasha found herself typing in the familiar phone number on instinct.

"Coulson."

"Coulson, Barton's been hurt. Really bad." Her voice cracked.

There was no hesitation on their handler's end. "I'll be there in an hour."

Coulson kept his promise, drawing all eyes in the waiting room toward him as he swept in. His crisp black and white looked too saturated and out of place next to the muted yellows of the hospital walls. He found her immediately and dropped into the seat next to her.

She didn't even realize she was covered in blood—_Clint's _blood—until she caught Coulson's worried eyes on her shirt. "You aren't hurt, are you?"

Natasha didn't say that the fist around her heart hurt more than any cut or bullet hole ever could. "I'm fine."

Coulson left soon after that to see if he could gain any information about Barton's condition from the doctor down the hall. Natasha slumped dejectedly in her seat, like Coulson took all of her energy with him as he left. A tired glance at the clock told her that it had been two hours since Clint had been wheeled into the operating room. It felt so much longer.

Coulson came back with a tight jaw and a crease between his eyebrows, but he didn't say anything about Clint's condition. He laid a hand on her shoulder and said, "Why don't you go and change clothes. Pack up your stuff. He won't be getting visitors for a couple more hours."

Natasha could see through the thin-veiled excuse to get her out of there, but her heart was already aching too much to delve too deeply into it. She just nodded stiffly and stood up to go.

The shower didn't make her feel better. She just stared as thin ribbons of blood circled around the drain and pretended not to notice that the water on her cheeks tasted a bit salty. The water pounded on her back like it didn't know how to make her feel better.

Her clothes were all packed neatly in her duffle, but Clint's were everywhere in the room. She tugged on one of his sweatshirts even though it was stupid and childish and everything she hated most about the world. It smelled like him. Something seized up inside of her, making her feel worse. She started throwing the rest of his stuff in his bag, making sure it wasn't folded or neat because Clint hated that. When it barely zipped shut, she awarded herself a small smile because she always watched Clint curse and huff and strain his arms as he tried to get the metal teeth together. She dropped the bag next to hers by the door.

Her bare toes curled in the thick carpet as she swept her gaze through the room one more time, even though she knew she hadn't forgotten anything. Her hand hovered over her heels, preparing to pull them on, but hesitated. Her fingers came to rest instead on her beat-up sneakers as she threw her heels into her bag as well. Right now she wasn't a world-renowned spy, a woman who could seduce a man with three words and a look. Right now she was Natasha Romanoff and her best friend was trying to be brought back to life by people that didn't know him. No matter how hard she tried to convince everyone otherwise, she was still human.

_You should be strong. You should be strong for him._

But she grabbed her selfishness and wrapped it around herself like it was the only thing keeping her together.

She fell back into the seat next to her handler upon her reentry into the hospital. He soaked in her bedraggled appearance that was so at odds with her reputation, but didn't comment on it, even though she knew he realized the sweatshirt wasn't hers. She didn't let him dwell on it as she asked, "Any update?"

"He's out of surgery," Coulson said, like he _wasn't _talking about the precarious tightrope of life Clint was currently balancing on. "Give it another hour and I bet you'll be able to see him."

Minutes were long and torturous as she felt them tap away under her fingers. A throbbing pain beat throughout her body in time with her pulse and the black hands of the clock were blurry because the waiting room was hazy.

She was biting her knuckle hard enough to taste blood, but she didn't care. Maybe she was even glad, because surely some of the pain would seep through the cut and away from her aching body. She hurt, she hurt all over and she knew she had no right to because _Clint _was the one with the hole right through his stomach, but she was nearly positive she had one too because the lump in her throat could have been tears or blood.

It could have been days until Coulson finally tugged her out of her chair by her elbow because she had come to realize that grief saturated time and held it back with its clawing fingers. There was a doctor waiting for them, one with hard edges and thin lips, and he led them to Clint's room with precise steps. And then he left because he had no connection to Clint and couldn't fathom why Natasha needed him so much.

She had heard people say that people looked small all hooked up to machines and having air pumped into their body because they couldn't do it themselves. Natasha rather thought Clint looked the opposite. He looked endless, formless, because he wasn't defining the edges of his personality with his sharp wit and dry humor. His existence was spread thinly in the world right then, and Natasha thought that if she blinked he could dissolve into the sheets.

Natasha sat herself into the seat next to him and tightly held onto his fingers like an anchor, so he wouldn't drift away.

She stayed exactly in that spot for two days.

Coulson came and went, because while Clint was everything to her, they were just a single facet of his life. But Natasha stayed because Clint had given her everything to live for.

She stayed because he was never getting away from her again.

-:-:-

Awareness trickled like cool water through Clint's subconscious.

He knew from the open and harsh and defined atmosphere in the room that he was in a hospital. He felt heavy and slow, and the itchiness in his arm told him there was an IV there. Some part of him that wasn't valiantly trying to draw lucidity toward him suggested that he was on pain medication. He wondered if he even wanted to wake up.

"I know you're awake, asshole, so stop pretending." The words were layered, and had he not been so utterly exhausted he would've cleaved the words in half and seen the affection underneath the annoyed tone.

The world reeled up around him, swirls of white and red assuaging his senses. The two halves of his vision sluggishly chased each other, trying vainly to reconnect. Natasha's face was the picture of calm, and it was like an anchor as everything slowed to a stop around her.

It took a couple tries for his tongue to properly wrap around the words. "How long—?"

"Forty-nine hours," she answered promptly. Clint thought he was imagining the way her face dropped for a second.

He sluggishly dragged a hand up his abdomen, felt the rough edges of the bandage spanning his torso. His breaths were too quick, too forceful. "I got shot," he said slowly, trying to put all the pieces together.

"Yes," Natasha replied, her voice sounding tiny. He dragged his eyes toward her again and reached out. Her breathing stopped as his fingers ghosted her arm.

"That's my sweatshirt." His voice was unsure.

"Yes."

His eyebrows pulled together as he tried to figure out what that meant.

Natasha launched herself at him.

At first, he was too surprised to do anything but let out a surprised puff of air. He smelled her shampoo and the faintest trace of smoke as the red of her hair curled against his cheek. Her arms were warm and the way her body molded to his felt a little bit like love. It took him a few long seconds to realize she was crying.

Her body was wracked with silent sobs, because even when Natasha reached the end of her rope she still held on to her dignity. He couldn't do anything but wrap his strong arms more tightly around her, and he vaguely thanked whatever entity was out there that he was on pain meds because he knew with absolute certainty that he would _not _have been this composed about the whole ordeal had he been completely lucid.

She stopped crying as quickly as she started, but made no move to leave his embrace. Instead, he shifted over and she fit herself between the railing of the bed and his side. Her head was tucked against his neck and her hand curled around his shoulder.

"I thought I had lost you," she said softly.

There wasn't anything for him to say that would make it better. So he tightened his grip on her and if it hurt, she didn't say anything or didn't care, because _he was there._ He was there and he was alive.

Maybe it was a bit selfish, but he couldn't stop the swell of emotion blooming in his chest stemming from the fact that she would've cared if he died. It was like plaster in the cracks of his interior, where loneliness seeped through and filled him up like water in the lungs of a drowning man.

"You can't die, Clint," she implored after a while. "You will be leaving me behind, and I can't deal with that."

They didn't talk after that, but Clint's mind was reeling. He was so used to fending for himself that when he suddenly had someone to watch his back, he had trouble acclimating to the change. He traced shapes on Natasha's arm, and although the pain meds were weakening under the barrage of pain trying to get through, he still felt like the luckiest guy in the world. Because he had someone that would be there for him no matter what. He could be completely enveloped by death's shadow and she would still be there, fighting tooth and nail to get him back. He had everything to live for.

And she would never let him down.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Whoever thought of summer vacation deserves a pat on the back, man. It's been really nice and slow, so you can expect more timely updates. As for this chapter, you can read it romantically or platonically, it's totally up to you. I left it up to personal preference, because I'm considerate like that. Leave a review if you've got the chance, and thanks for reading! Have an excellent day.


	4. Tony

Tony was annoying as hell.

He was stupidly immature and his ego was unrivaled. He was conceited and malicious and could take you apart with only a handful of words.

That's what he wanted you to think.

Clint didn't understand it at first; why would you _want _to make the majority of the population sneer at you every time you flashed an arrogant grin? He could feel Tony's defenses like a brick wall whenever the man was in the same room as him. He set himself on a pedestal so everyone could see him. Clint was starting to wonder if it was so no one could hurt him.

Clint was no idiot. Getting inside people's minds was his job. He saw what made them tick. Saw what made them laugh. Saw what they feared. And then he used it against them in the worst possible ways.

Tony's mind was like clay. It looked solid, but press hard enough and you broke through the walls. Clint knew what the billionaire was thinking just as easily as if it was his own mind.

Tony hurt. He inhaled the pain and suffering like he was an endless pit, like he was a black hole consuming galaxies of torment. When he was younger, he occupied a body as fragile as glass. His parents didn't plant the seeds of nurture and support, and he grew up to be the worst sort of breakable. The car Howard and Maria died in might as well as have crashed into Tony, because his glass walls cracked with their deaths.

But Tony Stark was Tony Stark and he was invincible. That's all he let anyone see.

And he dealt. Didn't he?

He surrounded himself with work, he invented cutting-edge technology, he forged a network of connections.

He made a name for himself that wasn't "Howard Stark's son."

He didn't know what living was, but he was pretty sure he couldn't be too far off the mark.

But Afghanistan shattered his glass for good. He lost everything. He lost hope, he lost his dreams. He lost himself.

He was nonexistent, a cloud floating through a sharp-lined sky and the contrast burned like regret, if Tony had been able to feel anything anymore. He was a ghost returning to world he couldn't fathom once was his. Sometimes, he felt he could just expand and expand until there was nothing left. Until he wasn't even wind anymore, he was nothing. Who would even care? Tony Stark was arrogant and ungrateful, and he didn't care about anyone but himself.

Iron Man was his redemption. When Afghanistan shattered who he was, he built himself again in red and gold. He used his aloofness and sarcasm to plaster a shell around him, and reinforced it with a machine. Because that was what Tony Stark was—a machine.

But he didn't fix himself. The glass was still shattered, just hidden behind alcohol and snark and an arrogant smile.

Clint knew all of this, and he knew that Natasha and Steve and probably Bruce could see it as well. But no one drew attention to it because everyone was afraid that if they dug too deeply into the wound, Tony would bleed out and die.

If Clint was being completely honest with himself, he would admit that actually, he kind of understood where Tony was coming from. Distance and indifference was a formula that added up to a broken spirit that had been crushed in the fist of insufficiency. Clint knew what it was like to choke on his own emptiness, breathing air that felt too stale in lungs that felt too small and know that if he blinked, he would disappear and no one would even notice.

He knew what it was like to watch his own worth be enveloped by the humility and compassion of others' and he knew how it felt to live in the encompassing and oppressive shadow of those who were better.

The difference between Clint and Tony was that Tony would be missed. Tony had so much to contribute to the world that if he was gone, the world would stutter in hesitancy and fold awkwardly and uncertainly over his empty space, knowing that it was _wrong wrong wrong _that he wasn't there anymore. He was Iron Man, and Clint was a circus freak with a bow and arrow and a trail of darkness that followed him like a mocking shadow.

But then Tony befriended him.

It wasn't that hard to figure out why, if Clint really wanted to delve into it, but he didn't want to read into it, because it felt so lightening to be needed. To be acknowledged. (The truth always sat in the middle of his mind like an ugly black monster. In the moments between sleep and awareness, the monster reached out his claws and tore at his chest with brutal honesty).

Tony liked to go with Clint to bars. They would try to replace their hollow centers with alcohol. They would talk and talk about nothing and Clint didn't know how much one could talk about absolutely nothing.

There was a silent acknowledgement that connected them. They understood each other and where they were coming from. But neither mentioned it because it would erode the walls of their fake world and they valued the displacement from all their problems too much to jeopardize that.

That's where they were one Saturday night, a bar. It was about five months since the formation of the haphazard bunch of misfits that called themselves the Avengers to rationalize the killing and devastation they somehow always managed to bring about.

"Why doesn't anyone else come on these—these…" Tony paused to search for the right word. "_Escapades?"_

"They're stupid, that's why," Clint said sagely, because dammit, he was the smartest man in the room, wasn't he?

The alcohol covered everything with a layer of blissful haziness, and he could almost pretend the warmness in his stomach was content.

Tony spun around on his chair and nearly fell off. He gave a thoughtful hum. "Hey. We got a secret admirer at our three o'clock."

Clint twisted himself around—perhaps a bit too quickly as the world split in half and struggled to pull back together—and saw immediately who Tony was talking about. It was a man in his mid-thirties, leaning on his elbows on a table about fifteen feet from them. His eyes were squinted at them, like he was trying to discern if he was actually seeing a third of the Avengers in a crappy bar in New York.

Tony downed the rest of his drink and propped his feet up on an unused chair with a satisfied sigh. "Not really my type, if you know what I mean, but—oh hell, he's advancing."

Sure enough, the heavy footfalls thudded against floorboards that groaned like they were warning Tony and Clint about what was to happen. He was behind them less than a breath later, and Clint turned back to his glass so he didn't have to engage in conversation. He felt rather than saw Tony kick his feet off the chair and spin towards the man, clearly preparing to shut him down and send him away.

"You're Tony Stark aren't you?" the man said, clearly pleased at figuring this out himself.

"That I am," came Tony's flippant reply.

The man hooked his foot around the chair Tony had just pushed aside and pulled it under him. Clint still didn't look up. He felt the man's haughtiness almost as strongly as he could smell the cloud of alcohol surrounding him. "Lots of people hate that remodeling you gave New York. Say vigilantes are just as bad as the criminals they're trying to stop." He spread his hands on the wood of the table like he was making a proposition. His words formed a rope of insincere friendship that tried to tie them down. "I don't think the same."

"Then you deserve a medal, my friend. Thanks for your…support…but we're not in the habit of rationalizing things that don't need to be justified," Tony said, catching the bartender's eye again and waiting for his glass to be refilled.

The man fell back; the cord of civility between them had clearly been cut. His face melted into a sneer. "Shoulda known. Arrogance _has_ always been your style, hasn't it, Stark? Tell me. What's it like to be a _superhero_?"

"Fucking brilliant," Tony spat. Fury seemed to unfold from Tony like wings. "Too bad you'll never know."

Hostility spread between them like a puddle of icy water. The other man opened his mouth to stab Tony with a derisive reply, when he stopped short, a grin spreading across his face like a mouthful of sharp knives. Clint stared resolutely at the glass between his hands, but he couldn't ignore the spite that was spreading across his back as the other man settled his gaze on the archer. "Found a friend, huh, Stark?"

Tony caught Clint's eye and something steely closed like a door on his expression. "Him? He's an Avenger. Why? Why do you ask?"

The other man felt his hold on the mountain that was Tony's ego slipping and he scrambled to latch onto something. "Don't tell me this is Cupid. Bow and arrow guy?"

"You mean the master assassin? Sure."

The man laughed and his voice bled mockery as it pressed into Clint's heart. "You've got to be joking me. What the hell do you think you're doing in the Avengers? It's fucking pathetic, is what it is. What kind of standards do you guys even have? Or is it an adopting-the-strays kind of thing? I'll be the first to tell you, though certainly not the last: you have no place on that team. You're pathetic."

Clint gazed at him coolly, but he didn't say anything.

Because what could he say when everything that came out of the other man's mouth was true?

He wasn't genetically superior, or a tactical mastermind. Hell, he couldn't even accept the fact that he had teammates now, and those teammates would probably drop everything to follow him to the pits of hell if he just asked them to.

He got brainwashed by gods throwing temper tantrums and tried to kill his own team because he had let his guard down for one second. And while the others forgave and forgot, Clint felt sick all the time, waiting for the prodding fingers of Loki's control ease back into his mind and mold it like clay.

He _was _pathetic. And he hated himself every day for not being better.

The other man was grinning, and his mouth curled like hatred.

But Tony had other ideas. His whole body was clenched by the paralyzing rigidity of anger. "You want to know what's fucking pathetic? You. You sicken me. You come over and try to downplay our worth, when we have given _everything _so your ungrateful ass can see the light of another day. We've been dragged through hell and back and we don't complain because that's what we do. We save the world, right? Because everyone's life is worth it. Now, I'm not the best man. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it. But I do know that my teammates have compassion so bottomless that sometimes I feel like the most wretched and unappreciative asshole that ever walked the earth. And I will not stand by and have you spit on that." Tony slammed his hand in front of Clint. "Do you know who this man is? He is one of those people. He is an Avenger. Good for the sake of good. Strong and loyal and willing to lay everything down for someone he doesn't know, including his life. He is worth more to the Avengers than you will ever know. We wouldn't _be_ the Avengers without him. So you can just march your jealous ass right back over to your seat and cry about how, no matter hard you try, you don't have the value that Clint has in his _pinky. _So you'd better walk away now, you absolute fucking _gumball!"_

There were several seconds of shocked silence as the words danced between the three of them, unsure of what to do.

A breath later, in a blink, the man's seat was empty and Tony knocked back the rest of his drink. He stood up and laid down a bunch of crumpled bills as he pulled on his jacket. Clint hurried to meet him at the door.

Clint still didn't know what to say as they strode briskly through the crisp night air, the sounds of the city around them like a shell.

Tony was the first to break the silence. "I'll admit, that felt good."

Clint gave a disbelieving snort. "I'm glad. I—I don't really know what to say, to be honest."

Tony waved a hand, like he was trying to diffuse the awkward tension. "Yeah well. As much as it hurts my badass reputation to say this, it was all true. I don't think we often acknowledge just how valuable everyone is to this team."

Clint's elation pushed at the corners of his mouth and his heart was beating something warm and comfortable through his veins. "Thanks."

Tony's mouth tightened into something that could've been a smile, if Tony showed such empathy. He didn't say anything, but Clint knew just how alike they really were in that moment. Both a little broken, but both saved by the harmony the Avengers brought into their lives. Both finding redemption in the camaraderie of teammates.

As the Stark Tower—or Avengers Tower as they were starting to call it—rose before them among the bustling city like a beacon, Clint felt more at peace than he had in a long time. He felt like he could finally breathe.

"Hey, Tony?" Clint said softly, the silence shattering anyway underneath the force of their delivery.

Tony whistled between his teeth, held tilted back and hands in his pockets. "Yep?"

"Absolute fucking gumball? Really?"

* * *

**Author's Note: **The bromance is strong in this one. Tony and Clint would be great friends, don't even try to fight me on that one. I know I promised more timely updates, but I forgot how much time working at my camp can take up. Luckily, the Steve one is pretty much done so I'll post that within the week. So now the real question: epilogue or no epilogue? Let me know in the reviews, and have a lovely day!


	5. Steve

**Author's Note: **I'm a bit unsure of my characterization in this one. Before you read, I want you to know that in no way do I think of Clint as a bad or hateful person. I think his self-worth just turns to anger sometimes and lashes out on undeserving people. But yeah, leave your own insights in the reviews.

To be clear, this takes place in the limbo between Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 in my own little fantasy world in which the team stuck together after the Chitauri debacle and kick monster ass on a daily basis.

* * *

Steve was the worst of all. He was the worst part of getting pulled into the whole teamwork business.

It was probably because Steve was the only one he could lock his sights on and solidly place anger. After all, he was the leader. It didn't help that Steve was so damn terrified of losing his whole world again that he just locked his jaw and shouldered the malice like a grim reward just so he wouldn't drive his new team away. Clint thought it was pathetic.

Clint got so angry sometimes. His fingers strained and his jaw ached and he kept poking and poking at Rogers to get a rise out of him. But that damned chiseled jaw just clenched and his eyes grew dark and hopeless and it made Clint so angry.

Steve's skin was transparent, and everyone could see with startling clarity how completely overcome he was with sadness. His veins ran with blood that was too heavy.

And then they stepped on the battlefield and Steve Rogers was tamped down by Cap. Clint was beginning to think of them as two separate people. Steve Rogers was heartbroken. Steve Rogers was hopelessly lost in a void of darkness. But Captain America was a ruthless leader, confident in the adrenaline-fueled haze of battle. Fighting was something of barest thought, instinct. It was easy to let Captain America take the stage while Steve Rogers was lost somewhere in the tug-of-war of identities.

And he led them.

He shouted out his orders, and expected them to be followed. He wanted soldiers. But instead he got a team that was so broken and isolated from each other they were essentially held together by duct tape and necessity.

Somehow Cap managed to look past that. Maybe seeing people's true centers came with the whole supersoldier package, because Clint honestly didn't know how he did it. He played to their strengths and covered up their weaknesses, holding them so close to the chest that sometimes Clint didn't even remember they existed in the first place. He was invincible, strong, and a tactical genius. He was the reason the whole team thing worked.

But when he stepped off the battlefield, Cap was stripped down until absolute heartache bled through the cracks. Steve was held together by a mere string of sheer determination. He was a time bomb and everyone was just waiting around until he just broke apart.

But he never did. And it was getting to the point where it was getting ridiculous.

It shouldn't have made Clint as angry as it did, the way Steve kept it together so well even when his whole world was a mere whisper, a fading echo, in this new century. Maybe it was jealousy that Clint buried under layers of denial and justifications. Jealousy that had grown into weeds of anger, grabbing hold of all rational thought and dragging it deep into the pit of his stomach.

When Clint teased him, it was aimed straight for Steve's aching heart. When he insulted him, it was to tear him down completely. The others never called him out on it, but sometimes their expressions became forced, their eyes darting to Steve to make sure he hadn't finally crumbled apart. And when Tony Stark saw that lines were being toed, you knew it was bad.

But Clint didn't care about what the others thought. He cared that Steve was too good of a man to turn on him. To yell at him, insult him, or punch him. He would just grit his teeth as part of his soul flashed to the surface of his eyes, and he just turned away. Because he was too good. He was righteous, and he always did what was right.

If Clint had been an enemy, if he had been hurting anyone other than Steve himself, there was no doubt in Clint's mind that Steve would have shut him down ages ago. But Steve still saw Clint as a hero, as a teammate, so he didn't do anything. Clint wondered if Steve thought that he deserved it or something.

Clint hated how he could be so good. He hated that Steve knew the right thing to do all the time. Steve Rogers always saved the day, and Clint was turning on his own teammates because jealousy had saturated his soul.

Words would always become pinched in his throat when he was talking to Steve. He knew he didn't really mean the jabs at Cap's worth. Maybe they were really directed at himself. He could certainly feel a sick sort of dread spread to his fingers every time Steve flinched back at the impact of an insult, and when Steve's eyes flickered with hurt and pain, Clint's did too. But he was helpless to stop himself. It was like anger had completely taken control.

"For God's sake, Barton, he's doing the best he can," Natasha spat at him once when Steve had left for his room again, Clint's taunts at his back like a barrage of bullets.

"It's not like we're not all thinking the same thing." Clint kept rationalizations lined up in little bottles in his chest.

Natasha's face broke apart in disbelief. "No! We're not!"

Natasha's hostility grappled with his emotions, trying to draw them to his lips. He desperately wanted to tell her _it's not him I hate, it's me. I don't believe anything I'm saying. _

But he didn't say a word as Natasha stalked from the room, gathering the respect she had placed on him as she went.

More than that, he didn't say a word to the person he needed to the most: Steve. There was a thick wall between them, and Clint knew he could never break through it. Hatred was the most powerful thing on earth. It was parasitic. It could tear down amity immediately, and it took more than a lot of time to reverse the effects. And even then, trust was forever contaminated.

Clint couldn't live with that, so he didn't. His words were like bricks, and he added them to the wall between them until it became unbreachable. Steve was lost in swirling darkness on the other side, and he thought no one could help him.

But Clint's world was looking pretty dark, too.

* * *

The situation was a relatively contained one.

Hill had come to them with weariness hanging onto her, latched onto her like a second skin and holding back her movements. Her voice was inexpressibly tired. "You'll love this one, Cap."

Steve wearily put away his humanity and shrugged on Captain America like he was putting on a coat that was three sizes too small. "What's the problem?"

Tony had spun himself around in his swivel chair and was now facing the opposite direction. He let out a drawn out moan of displeasure as he dragged his hands down his face. "_God! _I've been up for thirty-two hours doing damage control from the _last _problem. Give us a fucking _break!_"

Hill's eyes were as sharp as her voice. "Stand down, Stark."

Tony snarled in irritation. "I'm not your soldier, Hill. You got Spangles over there for that one."

Cap's eyes dropped for half a breath, and Steve shone through like a child putting his hand over a flashlight, letting the tiniest slivers of light peek through his fingers.

When Cap was painted back over the suffering of a broken man, it was like the change had never even happened. Just like Steve liked it to be.

"Knock it off, Stark," Natasha bit out, like the words were vile in her mouth. She seemed like a good little agent of SHIELD, but there was encouragement for Steve underlying her tone and anger directed toward Clint and Tony that had nothing to do with mission objectives.

Hill's slow inhale brought everyone back to the mission at hand. "These guys we're after…we think they might be a division of HYDRA."

Steve leaned forward in surprise, seriousness fortifying his spine. "What? Didn't it all end with Schmidt?"

Hill seemed hesitant to rip away Steve's security. His one redeeming thought when the rest of the world went to shit. Because no matter how devastated Cap was when he found out the world went on without him, he still had the peace of mind that _HYDRA was gone. _How could you tell someone they died for nothing? "It's only a handful of men, Cap. We're decently sure HYDRA hasn't regrouped. If anything, it's probably a lack of motivation on their part. Forming a brand new terrorist organization is a lot of work. Notoriety goes a long way in the world of scheming masterminds."

"Lots of experience with forming terrorist groups, Hill?" Tony said with a smirk.

Hill's glare landed on him with withering force. Before they could start an argument, though, Steve jumped back in. "What do they want? What are they doing?"

"Nothing so far," Hill told him. She swiped the screen of her tablet and Clint picked his own up as information flooded the display. "Well, I mean, they've been systematically leeching off a number of bank accounts, but besides that—"

Bruce snorted. He glanced around the table. "Besides that? That seems pretty serious."

Hill opened her mouth to respond, but Steve jumped in before she could say anything. "If it's HYDRA, this is way too low key for them. They're all about assertiveness, and if not that, then stealthiness that doesn't go detected. They wouldn't get caught." The air dried up with his voice, leaving room for grimness to seep in.

Clint flipped through pictures and short snippets of background information on potential perpetrators. "Then how do we know this is HYDRA at all?"

"Several of the men that are affiliated with this whole ordeal have been on SHIELD's watch list for a while now. But we've been keeping tabs on them separately. For them to be in this together…well, it doesn't look good," Hill explained. She rested her forehead on her hand, seeming at a loss for what to do.

Tony rubbed his knuckle on his chin. "So, what? They're gathering money and assets to carry out a future attack?"

Cap's face creased in confusion, as he shook his head to get his thoughts in order. "You know, that's another thing that doesn't make sense. HYDRA doesn't _need _money. It's always been well-funded, even in the forties. Even if they _had _to get money for some reason, they've recruited some of the brightest minds in the world to work for them. They wouldn't get caught doing it." He met Maria's eyes. "This seems like a trap."

Silence permeated the room as everyone looked at each other. Understanding raced through them, dread following close behind. The situation was the kind of hopeless that you could do nothing about. They needed to know what HYDRA was up to, but to go in would likely result in death. There was no way out.

Cap was the leader, however, and he made the call. "We gotta go in."

Natasha nodded in agreement, and Clint didn't miss the slight exhale in relief that Cap gave. Tony rolled his eyes and dropped his tablet onto the table. "The things I do for this agency," he muttered.

Thor was had been in Asgard since the Chitauri incident and there was no need for the Hulk in this mission, so Clint knew he was automatically roped into going. He could feel Steve's hesitance, the slight electricity of unsaid words, as he came to the same conclusion. Steve's questioning glance was spreading across Clint's neck, but he refused to look up. He didn't bother to acknowledge Steve; he just sighed and pushed off his chair, heading out the door to pack.

* * *

No one was at the warehouse.

The four of them stood in a line in the middle of the main floor and looked around helplessly. They were trained for the worst possible outcome. Fight to the death, they could handle. No fight at all…they were lost.

"Well, this doesn't seem suspicious at all," Tony said sarcastically, flipping his faceplate up.

But it didn't. Clint had a sixth sense for human presence. It was like a manmade silence, the kind that would race along your nerves and dilate your pupils, crawling across your back and leaving you waiting for the knife to plunge between your shoulder blades. But there was nothing fake about this silence. It was just empty. Clint could firmly say there were no eyes on them.

"What's the plan, Cap?" Black Widow asked, gun still drawn, but hanging listlessly at her side.

Cap was quiet. He was on edge, and his want to fight something was practically tangible as he looked around the spacious room in distaste. "Split up. Scope this place out. Widow, with Barton. Take the upstairs. Iron Man, with me. We'll look around downstairs."

Natasha nodded briskly and after shooting a glance at Clint, strode toward the ladder leading toward a series of rickety-looking catwalks that ringed the cavernous room. Clint followed, looping his bow over his shoulder.

"This ladder doesn't look very secure," Natasha said dubiously. It was rusted through in some areas and a couple of the rungs had already snapped off with age and neglect, leaving ragged edges like broken teeth. Waiting to pounce on its prey.

Even though there was still some hostility making her movements around him rigid, and he felt regret crackling down his spine when he caught sight of her eyes, dispassionate and without the usual spark of friendliness, he still cared for her safety more than anything in the world. "I'll go first." It was automatic.

She gave the ladder another hesitant look, but she took a step back as Clint wrapped his hands around the rungs. Despite the concern he knew she still harbored, somewhere deep in her chest where she locked all her unwanted emotions, they were superheroes, and saving the world came before personal safety. She knew he could handle himself.

The ladder was creaking under his weight and the rungs were rough and gritty with rust.

He was about halfway up before everything came crashing down. Literally.

His foot broke through one of the rungs and the sides of the ladder buckled and snapped with the sudden force. He found himself hanging precariously by his hands as the whole bottom part of the ladder fell to the ground in a cacophonous heap. He struggled to pull himself up, heartbeat erratic with the electrifying brush with the retreating hand of death.

"Clint!" There were shouts of his name and questions about if he was okay, but they all jumbled together as they raced around the room, bouncing off walls.

"I'm fine! I'm okay!" He shouted back, relief dissolving the confidence in his voice. He chanced a glance over his shoulder, and saw that there was a good seventy feet between him and the ground. His teammates (when did Cap and Tony get back?) were all staring up at him, worry and dismay scratching through their normally confident expressions. His laugh was breathless. "Guess you can't get up, huh, Natasha?"

"You're hilarious, Barton. Now shut up while we think."

Steve, Tony, and Natasha's faces all dropped down, conversing between themselves instead of the archer hanging precariously from the ladder. Despite the distance, the echoey room allowed him to hear what they were saying pretty clearly.

Steve was speaking. "Tony, you can fly up there—"

Tony cut him off. "I'm the only one that can get through the debris covering the entrance to the basement. I have to be down there."

Steve's head tilted back up, appraising the distance to the remaining portion of the ladder. "I might be able to make it." The tightness in his voice clearly conveyed his unwillingness to be partnered with Clint.

"You're the only one who can without Tony in the mix," Natasha said, something that might have been apology coating her words like clear polish.

Steve let out a sigh. It sounded like he regretted being a good man sometimes. "Fine. Whatever happens, we meet back here in an hour. Keep the comms clear."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Tony deadpanned. "C'mon, you arachnid, you."

"Call me an arachnid again and I'll show you why they call me the Black Widow," Natasha growled. She gave Steve another long look, expressing how sincerely she wished the situation was different, and then turned and followed Tony to the entrance of the basement.

"I'm gonna jump, Clint, but I don't know if the ladder will take my weight so suddenly. Climb the rest of the way so I don't bring you down with it." Always looking out for his teammates, even when that particular teammate wouldn't do the same for him. A pang of something painful jolted through him.

Clint began climbing again, feeling safer each step he got closer to the catwalk. Height always cleared his head. It allowed him to take a step back, analyze the situation, find his options and weigh his best one. He was safe in the sky. Others feared it. He was taught to embrace it.

He swung onto the catwalk with well-practiced grace. A bit more than a hundred feet below, Steve gave a curt nod that exuded nothing less than respectful indifference and backed to the other side of the warehouse, bending his knees and readying himself for the jump.

As Cap took off, Clint couldn't help be reminded of a cat, a large jungle cat, pouncing on his prey. He achieved about twenty feet on his first jump—high enough to grab onto a support beam and swing himself up. Clint knew Steve had trained in all sorts of martial arts and gymnastics, but he hadn't really seen it in action, so often were they relying on brute force and well-aimed blows to win their fights. It was pretty incredible to see the extent of Captain America's speed and agility.

He ran the length of the beam, toward the side of the warehouse. He jumped when he reached the end of the steel beam, kicked off the paneling of the wall, and barely managed to grab hold of another beam. His biceps strained as he struggled to lift his weight over the edge, his teeth clenched and face cringed with effort. With an exhausted grunt, he managed to pull himself up. He straightened.

Clint watched as Cap calculated his next move. He was only about thirty feet from the catwalk, but there weren't any more structural beams and he was pretty much caught. Clint could fairly see the possibilities roll around in his quick-thinking mind.

Then his expression was reinforced with steely determination, and Clint knew he had a plan. Because Cap always had a plan, didn't he?

Clint barely caught Steve's movement, so swift and agilely he took off, and a moment later, the catwalk lurched sideways with the sudden addition of a supersoldier's weight. Clint peeked over the rail, and his eyes quickly landed on Cap, hanging onto a chain connecting to the bottom of the catwalk. He was moving fast, already only twenty feet away.

He couldn't get onto the catwalk from his current angle, so when he was only about ten feet away, he made a jump to the ladder. The whole thing shuddered ominously, small bits of metal and a few screws clanging to the ground with a noise like a grim warning. Clint didn't even realize he was holding his breath until the supersoldier started climbing again. In what seemed to be only a few moments, Steve was pulling himself over the railing and dropping himself to the floor, exhausted.

He knew what he could've said. What he should've said. _That was incredible! Wow, Steve, you did a good job. Thanks for coming with me. _Instead he told him shortly, "We have to keep moving."

Steve weakly propped himself up. "I'm ninety-four years old. Give me a break."

"Evil doesn't wait, grandpa, so get up." Cap's face fractured for a split second, and so did Clint's conscience. But while Steve's hurt was quickly masked, Clint's kept pulsing blatant guilt through his whole body.

Clint opened his mouth; he didn't know what he was going to say, if he was going to say sorry, or tell him to rest for a little while longer, but Steve rolled to his hands and knees and forced himself into a standing position. "You're right."

He wasn't, but he didn't correct him as he started moving along the catwalk. He just followed him. Like always.

There were short walkways coming off the catwalks that led to a bunch of double doors with chains woven through their handles. They hung in the corners of their vision while they swept the top level, drawing their gaze like dangerous magnets.

When the top level yielded nothing, they came to a stop in front of one of the doors. It stared blankly at them, its steely exterior like a deathly jaw, waiting to snap them up. Clint felt the unknown sink its claws into his spine. Steve's expression revealed nothing.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Clint remarked solemnly. He had forgotten who he was talking to, and his words were laced with a kind of friendship that turned the corners of Steve's mouth down.

But he didn't comment on it. He smashed his shield onto the padlock, snapping it easily. "Don't we all," he muttered dryly, and he held open the door for Clint.

* * *

It was too dark to see anything, but their footsteps bouncing off the walls and the staleness of air led Clint to believe that they were in a narrow corridor. Unlike the main section of the warehouse, this air was definitely charged with human presence, and the back of his neck prickled in anticipation. He swore he could hear a soft exhale of breath, and a curling of a mouth as an unseen predator cornered them like a cat approaching a mouse.

Steve's uneasiness came off him in waves. Clint wanted to say something about calming down, because his fidgetiness was making _him_ nervous, but he was terrified of snapping the small semblance of protection the quiet gave. So he just matched his footsteps to Steve's slow ones and took comfort in the small companionship of breathing.

The space around them abruptly widened. He felt like a child hiding under the covers from monsters, imagining every shape as a gaping maw with dripping fangs, and every shadow as spindly fingers tipped with claws.

"This is all for nothing if we don't even look around," Cap said with irritation. His voice was less than a whisper, but it seemed so much louder in the oppressive silence. It was like a flag, showing the enemy exactly where they were.

Clint heard a rustling of cloth, and a second later, the blond of Steve's hair and his blue eyes wrestled with shadows as a flickering flame fought valiantly to drown out the darkness. Their little umbrella of light brought Clint more comfort than he cared to admit.

The room looked like it was used for storage, from what little they could discern from their meager illumination. Cardboard boxes and plastic tubs lined the walls, stacked on top of each other in a chaotic sort of organization. The whole room seemed so ordinary, so innocent, like it could have been any civilian's basement, with the boxes holding old baby clothes and broken junk that clung to sentimentality just well enough so as to not be thrown away.

Clint doubted they were that innocuous.

Steve apparently shared his feelings. He strode over to a cardboard box and slit the tape open with his knife. The flutter of papers danced with the shadows, and confusion dropped Steve's shoulders. He beckoned Clint over. "Here. Hold this." Clint fumbled with the lighter as Steve started to flip through the papers, eyebrows pulled together as he scanned the words.

"What's it say?" Clint said, the structured execution of saving the world burrowing through the hostility between them and letting something that resembled camaraderie to bleed through.

Cap's hard exterior suddenly cracked, and emotions pooled together on his face. "My God. They're trying to recreate the serum." His voice was tight and pained. He sounded like he was choking. Choking on the raw emotion that surged from his depths, emotions that weren't polished and controlled like they normally were. At that moment, Steve Rogers shone very brightly in Captain America's eyes. "They've been experimenting on people."

Clint whistled lowly, rubbing his forehead. He gathered his thoughts to lay them out neat and orderly, like Cap always did. "Were they—were they successful at all?"

Steve held a hand to his chest and seemed to be gauging the worth of the beat of a supersoldier's heart. His eyes closed and his face softened into lines of pain. "We would know if they were." It sounded like he wanted to nothing more than scratch out his existence, erase any trace that he ever lived.

"They should've never made Captain America," Steve said. His face was open, and Clint could visibly see all the guilt and fault and blame he was constantly collecting, pretending to be endless when in reality, he was already stuffed to the breaking point. His shoulders were heavy with the weight of the world, a weight one could only share if loneliness wasn't his best friend.

Remorse rippled through Clint like waves of fire.

"Hey, Cap, are you alright?"

Steve's eyes were shut tightly and his head was bowed, as if he was a man accepting martyrdom. "Oh, God. They never should've made me. None of this would have happened."

Clint couldn't dispute that. Creating a supersoldier set off a chain reaction, it lit a fuse that was getting closer and closer to the bomb. But it would've happened anyway. If not with Steve, than with someone else. Someone not as pure of heart, with values like a clenched fist and goodness pulsing with his blood. There were seven billion people in the world, but no one could match up to the valor and worth of Steve Rogers.

But it wasn't just about that. It was much more selfish than that, and Steve rejected such thoughts like they were poison. It was about what the serum took away from Steve. It gave him new lungs, but took away the air he needed to survive. It made him the epitome of mankind and drove mankind away from him with bullets and the corrosive indifference of time and ice. It made him Captain America, but killed Steve Rogers with the sharpened knife of injustice.

Clint's voice shriveled somewhere near his stomach, his chest pressing against his lungs in a way that felt too tight. Steve was silently suffering, but Clint's mouth was dry as words of comfort sat heavily on his tongue.

With a shaky voice, Steve muttered, "We need to get out of here. You're all in danger."

The way he omitted his own self-preservation was like tying the ribbon around a package of absolute defeat.

It didn't matter much in the end. The danger found them anyway.

* * *

It was definitely a blunt force trauma to the head that took him down, he decided, as his muscles strained against the rope tying his arms to the chair. His vision was sharp to the point of blurriness, the colors swirling around him too contrasting to be normal. There was a ringing in his ears and a pain that throbbed in time with his pulse.

"Your friend is quite the fighter." The voice was soft and thick with layers. Friendship wrapped around malice in such a way that it took reluctant fingers to rip off the paper, exposing the ugly center inside. The man was all soft. Soft eyes melting into a gentle expression. A shapeless body with listlessness pressed into the spine. Clint wanted to rake his fingernails over the man's face, baring the monster he knew was inside.

There was a knot in his stomach and it was growing with every passing second. It gathered up Clint's future, however bleak, so that it took the most basic level of control to rip away the panic on his face and push steely resolve back through the cracks.

The man seemed thoroughly unconcerned with the maelstrom of primal instincts tearing through Clint at that moment. His chuckle was reminiscing, clearly thinking of some earlier incident. "He really is Captain America, isn't he? Took down ten of our men and escaped. We got you though, so he failed in that respect. No one's perfect. Not even Captain America."

The man's hair was grey, and so were his eyes. He seemed to be all one color, pulsing drabness like he could just ebb away at any moment, melting to the ground and dissolving.

"The concept is simple," he said, and his voice deepened with the weight of facts. "We need Captain America, and Captain America needs you. We have you. We're going to use that to our advantage. He'll show up eventually. And given the proper motivation…well, I'll expect to see our spangled friend very shortly."

"Rogers doesn't need me," Clint laughed derisively. "He hates my guts. So good luck with that one."

Amusement flitted across the man's face like the skittering of an autumn breeze. "I certainly hope that's not the case, as that'll make your predicament a very grim one indeed."

Fear spread its wings and beat in Clint's throat, slicing the soft tissue with its sharp edges. Dread sat heavily in his blood.

The man stood, and panic broke open inside him. He knew that when the man was gone, horrible things were going to happen to him. He had been trained to withstand torture, but his future was growing and expanding like a star, ready to implode into nothingness. And it was different when death was actually standing at his shoulder, waiting ominously to swoop in and grab him. Black was creeping into his vision, slowly and maliciously, wrapping around all rational thought and filling all his crevices with trepidation. He was unraveling piece by piece, his identity lost somewhere among his falling parts.

"I'm going to send in a friend of mine in a little bit," the man was saying, facing the door. "You seem like a nice enough fellow, but we _really _want Captain Rogers. I'm sorry you were the bargaining chip." And the worst part was, he _meant _it. Truth hollowed out the words, and Clint had spent enough time under the cover of lies to recognize the man was being honest. His stomach churned.

The man left.

No one came back into the room for a long while.

_If this is their torture_, Clint thought bitterly,_ it's working_.

Anticipation swam like a disease through him, making him weak and dizzy. The walls were closing in, drawing nearer to him like a predator attacking its prey. Because that's what Clint was to these people. Their prey.

He wondered if Steve would even come for him. The answer in Clint's mind was fluctuating. One hour, he was positive the red, white, and blue would suddenly whip around the room, leeching the grey from the walls and throwing his world into color once more.

The next hour, Clint would be like a kid in front of a priest, all his sins fluttering out of the depths of his soul and laying in front of him so the whole world could see them. Because when you bare your soul to the world, certainty pounds through you, and you are the most wicked person in the world. He was positive Steve would just let him rot.

But Cap was better than that, right? Sure, Clint deserved to stay down there for eternity, the grey in the walls claiming him for their own, but Cap was good to the core. He wouldn't let a teammate flounder in the darkness, even if Clint did the same to him every single day.

Shivers raced down his arms and a shudder broke something loose inside of him. The ropes dug into his wrists so tightly, he could feel his pulse right below his thumb. He wondered if he was imagining it, just like he was imagining the encroaching darkness.

And then he heard Steve's voice right in his ear. He almost let out a sob when he did, so positive was he that he was officially hallucinating. Or was it the comm?

His voice was soft, low, and deadly; words carefully cut and laid in the sun to dry. "_Clint, if you can hear me, I'm coming for you. I promise."_

Clint wished that was true. He wasn't in the business of being dishonest with himself. He could always see the lies in the world, sliding down streets like rainwater, wrapping around trees and enveloping people with their misguiding placations. He thought when you could see the dishonesty for what it was, you could cheat it all. But he found himself leaning into their deceitful embrace.

Especially when the man finally arrived, a grin like a mouthful of cold fire and a knife that caught the light.

He punched Clint. His knuckles bled, but he didn't seem to feel the pain. After all, it's all about who's on the receiving end.

Blood dripped from Clint's mouth as he hung from the waist. It splattered on the cement in little starbursts, dripping slowly and leisurely so Clint was sure to see it. He shut his eyes tightly. He didn't care.

After a while, the man stood back, holding one purpling fist in the other. He had the eyes of one admiring a great piece of artwork. The knife jumped to his hand faster than Clint's weary eyes could follow it.

Skin split precisely and matter-of-factly. Clint didn't make a sound as the ribbons of blood carved rivers into his arms. He took the pain and put it in that cavernous hole in his chest, just like he did everything else. He was utterly numb.

He wondered why it didn't hurt. Maybe it did. Maybe he was screaming in pain. He couldn't figure it out. All he knew is he wanted to get out. He wanted to fold up the whole memory as small as it could go and hide it where he hid his guns and knives and arrows, because he was an assassin. Is that why he was hurting so badly? Was this torture punishment for his sins?

He felt dead. Maybe he was.

He shut his eyes, and the world stopped its dizzying spin.

He opened them, and there was the red, white, and blue.

Blue eyes. Blond hair. He blinked and the grey started to seep out of his vision.

There were sounds surrounding him. Friendly sounds. Sounds of comfort, tones of caring. He had never really experienced much caring before. He cared. He cared a lot. Too much, they told him, for his job. That's why he saved Natasha.

There were fingers under his chin, but they weren't rough or unkind. They were calloused, but not from death. From creation. From building a better world. Hard-work and honesty and goodness.

"Clint. You've gotta look at me. I got you out, but we still have to move. I don't know how many people are in this compound. Look at me, Clint. You hear me? Open your eyes."

Clint didn't know why he needed to open his eyes when they felt so torturously heavy, but the words were soft and imploring, shot through with veins of authority. He knew that voice. So he opened his eyes and tried to focus on the gentle concern floating disjointedly in front of him. "Steve."

"That's right. Can you stand?"

Clint couldn't, but Steve didn't really mind. He weaved his arm under Clint's and helped him to the door.

His vision lurched nauseatingly, and he fought the blackness creeping into his sight. Cap was counting on him. He needed him.

But the world was too fast, too bright, and he was just _so hot _and sleep hung onto his eyelids like a comforting friend.

Despite Steve's frantic pleas to _just hold on Clint, just a little farther, almost there! _he leaned into the darkness and succumbed to blissful unawareness.

* * *

He didn't remember waking up.

Someone had smudged the lines of sleep and consciousness and he blinked and he was staring at the darkened ceiling.

_Hospital_, his brain supplied.

The ceiling tiles blurred and doubled. He blinked and they jumped back into place.

He remembered it all. It was all right there in the middle of his brain, the knowledge hulking and ugly.

His chest was too tight and each breath ached and stretched his ribs painfully. He didn't know if they were broken or if he was imagining it.

"Natasha would like me to tell you that you are a 'fucking idiot with the brain capacity of a walnut.'" Clint let his heavy head fall to the side, determinedly ignoring the vertigo, and was met with the sight of a collected-looking Steve. He didn't look up from the sketchbook propped in his lap, but nudged a package on the nightstand closer to Clint with the end of his pencil. He returned to his drawing, pencil moving in long, fluid strokes. "But she also bought you cookies, so I wouldn't read too much into it."

Clint's tongue felt dry. He couldn't properly form his words. "Thanks."

Steve nodded, but he still didn't look up.

Clint started to push himself upright, every muscle groaning in protest. His ribs were definitely broken, and his arms were wrapped in several layers of gauze. His fingers went to his face, following a hot trail left by a still-healing bruise from his cheek to his temple. There were a couple butterfly bandages on his forehead, holding together a throbbing gash that curled from his eyebrow to his hairline. It pulled painfully every time his face changed expression too much. He felt like crap.

But that didn't compare to his mental state.

"Rogers—" Clint's apology stopped on his tongue.

His pencil stilled. "Yeah?"

"I wanted to say thanks," Clint said instead, feeling his conscience twinge.

A small smile pulled at the corner of Steve's lips. "We're a team, aren't we? You'd've done the same."

Clint felt sick, and it had nothing to do with his injuries. He felt anger growing in pulsing force. _Why was he so goddamn naive?_

But it stilled abruptly, like a storm at sea. Regret drowned out the rage. Sorrow. Guilt.

Clint took a deep breath. "Thank you for everything. For finding me, and getting me out. You saved my life."

Rogers looked ready to interrupt, so Clint plowed on, before he lost his nerve. "And I want to say I'm sorry." There was a curl of something comforting growing in the pit of his stomach. "I've been a dick to you, and you don't deserve it. I've been having trouble with this whole team thing, you know? I don't know how to be better, and you're the goddamn paragon of perfection and I don't know. It's easy to get jealous. I shouldn't have taken it out on you, though."

Rogers finally looked up from his drawing. A mix of emotions etched onto his face. Normally, Clint could tell exactly what he was thinking, but his features remained schooled as he twisted the pencil through his fingers. "You mean a lot to this team, Clint. Not to sound pretentious, but we wouldn't have you if you weren't. You contribute your talents, and that's all any of us are really doing. I mean, you're on a team of gods and twenty foot rage monsters and a suit of armor that carries its own mini arsenal…the fact that you're on the team at all shows you must be pretty damn special. You have no enhancements, no powers, but you can save the world anyway. Why wouldn't you think that's impressive?"

Typical of Rogers to jack his own apology and turn it into a pep talk for someone else.

But even as he thought that, a sense of peace washed over him. Forgiveness lightened his heart. He felt pretty damn important right then. It was a feeling he never really had before. He had always played the underdog, always got second, never really amounted to anything but a killer with a bow.

But he was valuable. His crumbled self-esteem and punctured confidence cleared away like clouds after a storm and he saw worth shining through. Importance.

"You're a hell of a person, Rogers," Clint said finally.

Rogers laughed softly. "I try. But before you applaud my existence, I think you should know that I ate your cookie."

And Clint just laughed because he felt lighter than air. Friendship felt a lot like happiness.

* * *

**Author's Note: **There will be an epilogue but I am at this point unsure of what it will consist of/when it will be posted. Hopefully sometime in the near future. But life, man. It gets in the way.

Thanks for reading, and if you would please leave a review, I would be ever so grateful! I want to thank everyone who has favorited/followed/reviewed so far. You guys are such motivation. Have a great rest of your day!


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